Elongate cables such as power cords, grounded power leads, or heating cables often must be electrically connected to another elongate cable or to a source of electrical power such as a wall outlet. An electrical plug is frequently used to make connection to a power source. Connection of the cable to the connector or the plug can require tedious and craft-sensitive assembly, as well as the use of special tools, in order to ensure that good electrical connection is achieved.
Elongate heating cables are one type of cable which often requires connection to a connector or a plug. Such heating cables are known for use in the freeze protection and temperature maintenance of pipes. Particularly useful elongate heating cables include: first and second elongate electrodes; a plurality of resistive heating elements connected in parallel between the electrodes, e.g. a continuous strip of a conductive polymer in which the electrodes are embedded or which is wrapped around the electrodes; and an insulating jacket, composed, for example of an insulating polymer, which surrounds the electrodes and heating elements. In addition, the heating cable often also includes a metallic grounding layer, in the form of a braid or a tape, surrounding the insulating jacket, which serves to electrically ground the heating cable and provides abrasion resistance. The heating cable may be cut to the appropriate length for each application, and connection must then be made to the connector or plug.
Connectors and electrical plugs for use with electrical cables such as heating cables often require that, prior to installation of the cable into the plug, the conductive polymer be stripped from the electrodes. Stripping the polymer can be difficult, may require special tools, and may not result in completely “clean” electrodes, thus making good electrical connection to the plug difficult. In addition, the time required to strip the polymer and assemble the plug can be relatively significant.
To address these inefficiencies, insulation displacement connectors have been developed for use in making electrical contact to the electrodes of electrical cables. An insulation displacement connector (IDC) can be of any configuration, but often has a fork shape, with two tines separated by a slot and connected at a base. Often the tines have sharp edges at their tips to penetrate the polymer surrounding the electrodes. U.S. Pat. No. 6,206,720, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference, teaches an IDC including a beveled groove at the bottom of the slot between the tines. The beveled groove provides a notch in the polymer surrounding the electrodes, which separates the polymer and leaves a clean surface for good electrical connection.
It is often useful to mount IDCs onto a fixture to make electrical connection easier. A fixture for an IDC may include a wire guide module having a fixed channel size for receiving the electrical cable. When the cable is inserted into the channel and the IDC module and the wire guide module are mated, the cable is forced against the tines on the IDC so that the tines pierce the cable to make electrical contact with the cable electrodes. However, the fixed channel size of such a wire guide limits the guide to use with cables having a dimension corresponding to the fixed channel size. When cables of different dimensions are used, a different wire guide must be provided in a connector assembly. Storing and assembling different sized wire guides into connector assemblies to accommodate different sized cables can be inefficient.
Accordingly, there is a need for a wire guide for an IDC connector assembly that is configured to accommodate multiple cable sizes.